This paper exposes the latent but potent role of seemingly hidden spatial autocorrelation (SA) in all geographic theories, highlighting that it is everywhere, matters, and is a fundamental property of geotagged phenomena. This narrative examines and extends the literature about the inescapable nature of the SA paradigm and the near-universal mixing of positive and negative SA. This study summary transcends the widespread but often implicit treatment of SA within geographic theories that their assumptions help achieve when they embed spatial processes, shape geospatial expectations, and define independent areal units so that these theory-delineating constraints largely absorb SA, reducing residual spatial dependence/correlation and improving conjectural validity, masking its presence for decades if not centuries. This paper explores selected prominent human geography theories (spatial optimization, agricultural location, gravity-model-based spatial interaction, central place systems), cultural and humanistic geography, geohumanities abstractions, physical geography theories (plate tectonics, climatology, uniformitarianism, soil formation), cartographic theories (geometric projections, semiotic/communication, cognitive/perceptual, geographic information systems anchored spatial analysis), and basic geospatial data gathering methodologies (qualitative and quantitative spatial sampling). It demonstrates that across the discipline of geography, exposing masquerading SA deepens theoretical coherence and strengthens methodological integrity, encouraging integrated spatial reasoning that bridges interpretive and analytical traditions. This article concludes by providing exemplifications of bringing scholastically unrealized SA in geographic theories out of obscurity, together with certain salient benefits from doing so, affirming the magnitude of fulfilling its major objective: SA is poised for discovery in all geospatial theories, from those for human and humanistic geography, through physical geography, to those for cartography as well as methodologies concerning all georeferenced data collection missions.
Daniel A. Griffith (Tue,) studied this question.